TheDenizen talks boobs and bars

Alright kids, time for some more trash cinema.

TheDenizen is back and I've got celluoid cells on the agenda. Jail cells, that is.

A prison makes a great setting for a movie. Two opposing uniformed gangs (prisoners and guards) have to coexist in a tightly controlled, institutionalized environment. Dramatic tension is always high and the potential for violence is ever present. Not to mention the fact that filming in concrete rooms and plain grey hallways can be done pretty fucking cheap. Make it a women's prison and cast a bunch of babes and you've got yourself box office gold. Today I'm going to discuss a selection of Women In Prison films.

WIP movies go back to the 40's and 50's, but the films from that era were generally chaste morailty plays designed to scare young women away from a life of crime. It wasn't until Spanish sleaze merchant Jess Franco came along in 1969 with his shocker 99 Women that WIP films became about exploitation, reveling in lurid displays of flesh and sexual sadism. 99 Women was a hit, and established the formula that the vast majority of subsequent WIP movies adhered to.

A wide eyed, naive young woman is brought to a prison to begin serving her sentence (she's sometimes guilty of a crime of passion but usually completely innocent). She's introduced to the sadistic warden, is forced into a shower and given a revealing prison uniform, and then mixed in with the general population. She encounters tough lesbians, gains the respect of other prisoners by winning some catfights, endures torture or rape at the hands of the warden and ultimately leads a jailbreak attempt. The escape often fails with the prisoners being killed or returned to their cells.

It seems like kind of a downer, but dozens of profitable films have been made using pretty much that exact outline. Of course, the appeal lies not in the riveting storytelling, but in the pervasive nudity and the BDSM fantasy of the (usually fairly tame) torture sequences. It's not everyone's cup of tea to be sure, but if you can enjoy this type of thing, there are some great flicks out there to be seen. Anyways, enough rambling, here's some quick reviews.

99 Women - the first, but not really the best. I already mostly described this one, so let me mention this: As with many European WIP movies, 99 Women exists in both R and X rated versions. The X rated stuff is most often (as in this case) cheap looking hardcore insert shots filmed by someone else, making no effort to match the sets or the actors to the people in the real movie. Be preapred for that if you plan to delve into the X rated or Unrated cuts of WIP flicks.

Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion - Meiko Kaji plays Sasori, a woman falsely imprisoned after being betrayed and framed by a former lover and his gang. Sasori is not just tough, she's incredibly bright and determined, and after enduring the standard WIP trials (including a very sexy lesbian scene with an undercover cop posing as a fellow prisoner), Sasori actually escapes the prison and exacts bloody revenge on all the men who put her there. A classic that spawned three sequels.

The Big Dollhouse - Mmmm, Pam Grier. A bunch of other hot chicks, too, but mmmm...Pammy. Also Sid Haig. This one was directed by Jack Hill, who made a handful of blaxploitation films with Grier. An all female prison in the Phillipines somehow has mostly hot American girls as prisoners, who get into the usual trouble and catfights. One of the best produced WIP films.

Virgins from Hell - super campy stuff from Thailand, about an all girl motorcycle gang who commit violent robberies to fund an assault on a criminal compound. The plot is ridiculous and convoluted, but basically these chicks fail utterly and get captured by the criminals, who keep them locked up in an underground cave to test their aphrodesiac drugs on (seriously). Thai film laws forbid nudity, so part of the appeal of this one is how retarded it is seeing two chicks in evening gowns having a catfight in a tub, or lesbian sex scenes that consist of fully clothed soft kissing and sultry looks. Hilarious crap, and full of crazy action and stunts.

Lost Souls - this variation on the WIP theme involves a large group of illegal immigrants from mainland China who are captured for ransom by a sadistic gang outside of Hong Kong. The prisoners, men and women alike, are stripped naked and kept in a filthy barn and are subjected to all manner of abuse. Some are tortured, some are raped and they all end up dead or deported. This was actually quite grim and unpleasant; genuinely sadistic instead of camp-sadistic and none of the nudity was titillating at all. This flick is hard to recommend, and it's probably one of the strangest things ever produced by Shaw Brothers, much better known for their kung fu epics.

Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS - The prison this time is actually a WWII concentration camp, run by a female S&M Nazi with huge boobs. All the prisoners are Jewish, but thankfully the film veers away from any overt racism, merely fetishizing the Nazi trappings. Lots of sex in this one, even the torture scenes have a slant of kink to them, like one with an electrified dildo. This flick is notorious for good reason and well worth a look.

There are many other examples of the type, like the three Ilsa squels (Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, Wicked Warden, and Tigress of Siberia), Barbed Wire Dolls, Escape from Hell, Women in Cages, Bare Behind Bars, Caged Heat, The Big Bird Cage, etc. etc. Sadly, as the exploitation grindhouses of the 70's gave way to the VCR boom of the 80's, the demand for this type of fare nosedived as a glut of hardcore porn became available to watch in the comfort of your own home. WIP movies have pretty much remained the exclusive domain of porno (and direct to video crap) ever since.

Perhaps with Rodriguez and Tarantino's recent renewal of the exploitation cycles, we may see a proper WIP movie in the theaters again in the near future. The closest thing we've had in years has been Black Snake Moan, with half naked Christina Ricci in chains for most of the running time.

More of that shit, please.

I also saw Nightmare on Elmstreet

Since I'm the head ninja, which either means I'm the boss or I give everyone head or both, I can't stand by and have an Elm Street debate on my site without commenting, but the comment section is for Chinese spammers only, so I figured I'd do a post instead.

Let me set a bit of a scene for you guys.

Imagine being six years old. I know, some of you might be that are reading this. Shit fuck dick diarrhea. Still, imagine DVDs not existing, and magical little plastic devices called VIDEOTAPES just starting to get noticed.

Man, I feel so fucking old right now you guys.

Anyway, some of you might be too young, legit, all joking aside, to remember the big VHS boom. VCRs finally became popular- and video rental places were the shit, son. It isn't like Blockbuster now, which is to say video stores back then didn't suck like ten kinds of fat cocks. Video stores would put a HUGE variety of shit out because video was so hot that no matter what you had, someone would probably rent it. The place I went, Video Valley in Chatsworth, CA, had SO MUCH SHIT DUDE. They had these big fucking scary video boxes with the horror movies on them and they even had shit in BETA.

So anyway, Nightmare on Elm Street was there and we rented it and I loved it and I was six and my parents were cool and fuck commas and where was I going with this?

Uhhhhh...yeah so I was six, and a Freddy fan. By the time I was seven, it was time for Halloween, and I was FREDDY and I didn't have the shitty licensed Freddy mask that they were selling at the stores, I had this fucking crazy ass one that I bought at a magic shop that I think they made themselves, because I haven't seen ONE since. I'll post a pic sometime.

I had my hat, my glove, my sweater, and my fucking badass mask, and noticed something.

EVERY FUCKING KID WAS DRESSED AS FREDDY.

But talking to them about it, man, these fucks were normal kids whose parents didn't let them watch R rated movies and just heard about them from older kids and shit.

FUCKING POSERS

Anyway, saw the new flick. It wasn't bad, but Freddy as melty Voldemort wasn't a great look, but he had a creepy smile that was pretty awesome. I thought it was passable. I mean, it wasn't as good as the first one, or Dream Warriors which was one of my favorite movies growing up, but it was the fuck of a lot better than the shittier sequels like Dream Child or Freddy's Dead.

Fuck Dream Child.

So yeah, I'm a lifelong Elmstreet fan and didn't fucking hate the remake, but the remakes for Halloween and Friday the 13th can SUCK MY BALLS.

Thanks Head Ninja

I now have better fine art hanging in my dining area:



I do plan on getting this framed, just not soon. I also need to cut the white off.

So my girlfriend works at a copy shop...

Until August, and recently we've been making these badass posters and just hanging them around town. However I kept one! ELI MANNING DRUNK!



So I want more images, they must be high quality so they don't look shitty, to hang in my home or around town.

A picture says a thousand words.

This one says three. "Fuck yeah, motherfucker."

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TheDenizen reviews Nightmare on Elm Street

Hey what the hell, jzbadblood mentions the movie I just saw tonight. So here's my take on the Freddy remake:

Jackie Earle Haley is pretty good as the creepy-as-fuck pedo Freddy, and there's a couple of cool visual concepts and novel kills...but it's not scary at all, and it's not funny at all....it's just kinda there, and it's boring watching the two protagonists slowly and painfully piecing together Freddy's backstory since pretty much everyone in the theater already knew what the story was. Too many weak jump-scares, not enough Freddy cracking jokes.

It was a decent enough movie I guess, just kinda unnecessary.

And jz also posed the question 'why do we like horror movies'? Well, I can only speak for myself, but it's totally about the blood-lust.

Coming Soon from jzbadblood

Last week "A Nightmare on Elm Street" came out to harsh criticism from across the board. Professional critics like Roger Ebert panned the film:

" The movie consists of a series of teenagers who are introduced, haunted by nightmares and then slashed to death by Freddy. So what? Are we supposed to be scared?"

Fans of the series hated the movie before it even came out. It is a remake after all, and no matter what haters will be hating. Me, personally, I enjoyed it a lot. I try to go in to every movie without any bias or pre-conventions. Of course that's impossible, but the point is I make an effort, and with "A Nightmare on Elm Street" I wasn't really able to do that. I am ashamed to admit that. As a fan of the series I had very low expectations, and thus I liked the movie a lot. Perhaps if I had went in level-headed I may have hated it? Who knows. That's the tricky thing about the brain; a lot depends on your mood.

Anyways, I'm rambling. The thinking about my mood and expectations and the Ebert quote got me to thinking about why I like horror movies.. It's not about being scared (although Halloween 1 still creeps me out alone at 3:am). It's not about blood-lust, because I tend to let flies out of the window instead of smashing them..

And then I came to a conclusion which kind of makes everything before this pointless: I don't know. I can humbly admit that. I don't know why I like horror movies, and that's fine with me. I accept that.

So now you're asking yourself: What's the point of all this? Well, let me explain. After wasting my time thinking about all this psychobabble I got a huge urge to watch all of the Friday the 13th movies so Friday night I bought the 3 pack of New Line movies, and today I received the F13 collection in the mail...

How does this effect this blog you ask? Well.....Starting some day near the weekend my "review/analysis" of Friday the 13th Part 1 will be up, and after that Part 2 will follow, and etc. etc. etc.

Until then I ask you to pray with me for a "Salute Your Shorts" DVD release